ABSTRACT
Countries with limited natural resources in the conventional sense can benefit from their more intangible natural assets. When compared with many other developing countries, Turkey has a fairly wide and diverse endowment of natural resources, besides an intimidating array of natural economic handicaps. In terms of climate and topography, her different regions are strikingly varied; a stranger deposited first in the extreme north-west, in the green fields and rolling hills of Thrace, and then in the lofty and barren mountains of eastern Anatolia, might well have difficulty in realising that he was still in the same country. With the notable and crucial exception of crude oil, Turkey is reasonably well endowed with most of the basic industrial minerals. Among other mineral resources chromite and boron minerals, of which Turkey is a leading world producer, are export items, although the amount sold varies greatly from year to year, according to market conditions.
